Synopsis of Layne Redmond's When the Drummers Were Women - a spiritual
history of rhythm

I highly recommend this book
to all women - and men - who are interested in the spiritual aspect of drumming.
ISBN 0-609-80128-7 Published by Three Rivers Press / Random House 1997

It seems that
women are rediscovering an important and long-lost spiritual connection with
drumming. Women must intuitively sense that drumming was in ancient times a very
important activity for women - it was the focus of their spiritual power. And
perhaps we also sense that, in ancient times, and for thousands of years, women
were the custodians of spiritual life.

ANCIENT
GODDESS-BASED CULTURES

Due to
technological advances in the field of archaeology as well as extensive
excavations over the last 25 years, much more information about our ancient past
and evidence of goddess-based cultures has come to light. Our knowledge of
prehistory and ancient history is being radically reassessed and reinterpreted
in the light of these new findings.

In the
Paleolithic Age (500 000 – 10 000 BC), European and western Asian cultures all
worshipped various forms of a Divine Mother (e.g. Isis, Aphrodite, Cybele,
Demeter, Artemis, Persephone). She is not just a female equivalent of the fixed
Judeo-Christian idea of “God”, but more an archetype, or symbol, of the eternal
female, with many layers of meaning, and appearing in many different forms. In
her most ancient form, she’s embodied in the archetype of the Great Mother, who
created her children and nourished them on the fluids of her body. For thousands
of years, this nurturing Divine Feminine was the most significant representation
of divinity.

People saw
themselves as very much a part of the earth. The earth was seen as a
manifestation of the Great Mother. And because new life came from women’s bodies
as it did from the earth, women were seen as the human embodiment of the divine.

An
understanding of the rhythms of nature was essential for the survival of
communities. They had to be able to predict cyclical patterns – e.g. tides,
seasons, animal migration patterns – and this gave rise to the earliest
timekeeping systems. Because of the correspondence between the menstrual and the
lunar cycle, women would have been particularly in tune with the rhythms of
nature. The first timekeepers were probably women.

OUR RHYTHMIC
LINEAGE

Sacred drumming
probably began as an echo of the human pulse. The first rhythm we are exposed to
is the pulse of our mother’s blood – even before our ears have developed. Our
bodies developed in response to the rhythms of her body. Before conception, we
began in part as an egg in our mother’s ovary. This egg was formed when she was
a four-month-old foetus in her mother’s womb – i.e. we existed for five months
also in the womb of our grandmother. This means that a part of us vibrated to
the rhythms of our mother’s blood even before she herself was born. And this
thread of rhythm runs back past our grandmother, and all the way back to the
beginning of time.

In ancient
cultures, rhythm was seen as the sacred and structuring force of life. Drumming
played a very important role in religious rites. Priestesses would beat sacred
frame drums to express the process of creation. The drum would summon the
goddess, and it was also the instrument through which she spoke. So the drumming
priestess was the intermediary between divine and human realms. By aligning
herself with sacred rhythms, she would invoke divine energy and transmit it to
the community. These rhythms would connect the individual with the rhythms of
the community, the environment and the cosmos.

RITUALS

Drumming was
very much a part of everyday life (as it still is in many indigenous cultures),
and it was used in many different rituals for many different reasons. For
example, one of its uses was to drive away evil spirits and purify spaces.

But one of the
most important uses of the drum was in rituals which involved the archetypal
pattern of death and rebirth. The drum helped to release the old and invoke the
new. In funeral rites, the drumbeat guided the dead through the realms of the
afterlife and was believed to hasten their rebirth [see picture]. And in the
cycles of nature: the vibrational force of the drumbeat woke the sleeping life
within the earth. Drummers played over freshly sown seeds to quicken their
ripening. It was also used in menstruation and childbirth – certain rhythms
caused the womb to contract, aiding menstrual flow or facilitating labour.

Around 2000 BC,
a drumming ritual was performed every new moon, in order to resurrect the moon,
as well as facilitate the flow of menstrual bleeding (which happened at the same
time). Since the Paleolithic, menstrual blood had been considered a powerful
magical substance for invoking resurrection or rebirth. It was believed that the
concentrated bleeding and drumming of the priestesses had the power to draw the
moon back, and simultaneously make the earth fertile.

THE MOON:
PRIMORDIAL SYMBOL OF RHYTHM.

As it waxes and
wanes, it exerts real physical influence on the earth and its inhabitants
through the tides and female menstrual cycles. It is the oldest symbol of rhythm
and the oldest way of marking time. This is why in many traditions, the moon is
represented as a goddess playing on her moon-shaped frame drum, marking and
creating the rhythms of life.

Venus of
Laussel (25 000 – 20
000 BC) [see picture]: guards the entrance to a cave in southern France – the
oldest known image that associates a goddess with a moon symbol. She’s holding a
bison’s horn in her right hand – a very ancient symbol of the new moon, as well
as one of the oldest known musical instruments, used to invoke the power of the
deity. The horn has 13 incisions, representing the 13 days from new moon to full
moon, as well as the number of lunar months and menstrual cycles in a year. Her
left hand rests on her womb – indicating that she’s aware of this connection.

THE PATRIARCHAL
SYSTEM: SUPPRESSION OF THE FEMININE

About 5000
years ago, the peaceful goddess-based cultures were destroyed by invaders, who,
quite brutally, imposed their patriarchal system on the tribes they conquered.
It was a social system based on male domination and an authoritarian and
hierarchical social structure. Wealth was acquired by conquering others, rather
than by developing methods of production. The symbols of the goddesses were
gradually demonized and given evil connotations.

Later, with the
fall of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity, the Divine Feminine was
eradicated altogether. The early Roman church fathers insisted on the exclusive
worship of one male God. This has had vast implications for how we see
ourselves: divinity becomes exclusively masculine, so we stop seeing the
feminine as being divine. Suppression of the goddess meant the suppression of
women, as well as the suppression of the feminine (in both men and women). The
church obviously recognized the connection between women's spiritual power and
drumming. In the 6th Century, Pope John III banned the sacred frame
drum. Even professional musicians were not allowed to be baptized. By banning
sacred drumming, the patriarchal religions cut off our access to significant
parts of our psyches.

OUT OF RHYTHM
WITH NATURE

The banning of
sacred drumming had huge implications, and was also very symbolic in that,
literally, our society fell "out of rhythm" with nature. The order of the
Universe is rhythmic, and we all have a psychic and physiological need to be in
sync with the earth’s cycles. In ancient cultures, the tempo of human life was
synchronized with the rhythms of the earth. The priestess’s frame drum expressed
the rhythms of the cosmos, and helped people to connect with it. People
understood that rhythm was a part of life, and that women’s bodies were
intimately linked to these rhythms.

Another
symbolic change was the scrapping of the lunar calendar. The earliest
time-keeping systems were based on the lunar and menstrual cycle. The first to
change the lunar calendar were the Sumerians, in 2500 BC – in order to regulate
tax collection. (Problems with the lunar cycle: the length is not constant; and
time of the new moon varies according to location.) Later, the Romans imposed
the Julian calendar that we still use today in the Western world.

In addition to
this, our modern Western culture is very much technology-driven, which has
resulted in a lot of artificial rhythms. Artificial light creates artificial
cycles of day and night; the stresses of life cause high blood pressure in our
bodies, and we don't breathe properly. We're also constantly bombarded with all
sorts of artificial rhythms and waves from e.g. cell phones, TV's, radiowaves,
etc.

Another
implication of living in a technological culture is that the rhythms we are
exposed to are much faster than natural rhythms. Even if we can't consciously
detect the sound of air conditioners or the microsecond ticks of computer chips,
we are affected anyway on a cellular level. The body tries to remain in harmony
with its environment, and we wonder why we're suffering from stress, and driven
to the point of panic.

HEALING THE
SPLIT: RECOVERING THE FEMININE

The banning of
women’s drumming from religious life was central to the disempowerment of women
in Western culture. We lost an important part of ourselves.

Connecting with
your own sense of rhythm is one of the oldest forms of healing and
self-integration. Drumming can be a very empowering experience for women.
Drumming is a powerful tool for reconnecting with the rhythms of nature, our
bodies, and our inner selves. So by drumming together, we can start to recover
and reintegrate those parts of ourselves that have been lost.

Drumming helps
us to reconnect with and celebrate the divine feminine in all of us. It
literally invokes divine energy and helps us to connect with it. We can learn
once again to recognize ourselves as reflections of the divine, and to reclaim
our ancient role as transmitters of the sacred. And in so doing, we can restore
the values associated with the divine feminine – compassion, healing, nurturing
and nourishing, and respecting life in all its forms. We can live in greater
harmony with the natural world. And by healing and transforming ourselves, we
also heal and transform our society.